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Rereading Trailokyonath Mukhopadhyay

Meet Kankabati. Wearer of bangles. Queen of fish that live inside the pond in her backyard. Wife of a Bengal tiger. Best friend of a mosquito named Stale Water. Lullu. Unbeknownst to Delhi’s Amir Sheikh, he is the ghost sat on his haveli’s terrace. He likes the looks of Amir’s wife and, soon as Amir utters the words ‘Le Lullu’, he spirits her away. Lullu’s friends are Gogo and Ghyagho whose marriage was arranged with Nakeswari, of the beautiful nose, but talks broke down. Nakeswari reappears in the eponymous novella Kankabati, as the suitably-embittered ghostwoman scorned.

If you have had some connection or exposure to life in 19th century Bengal or are interested in magical realism and speculative fiction, then their creator Trailokyonathbabu is right up your street. Though these specific definitions in English literature came about some decades later after he wrote his works, his own writings, in Bengali, comprised some of the first fiction written in those genres, though citation of outside sources may be required to establish this fact. He is mostly known as a humorist and fantasy writer, celebrated for his collection of satirical stories, Domruchorit, depicting the life and times of protagonist Domrudhar in colonial India. Domrudhar is portrayed as a dishonest man who rises from a lowly shop-assistant to being a land-owner. Trailokyonath is also known for his inimitable ghost fiction, the Bengali’s unique contribution to world literature.

Importantly, Trailokyonath’s writings are not just about genres or bending genres. They present a picture of Indian society of the time, and of the sensitive and progressive Bengali mind. Female readers are particularly sensitive to how women are portrayed in literature, directly impacted as they are by the world history of misogyny. Trailokyonath’s women are often idealized; they don’t have the anger and meanness, jealousy and worries that are intrinsic parts of the psyche of an ordinary woman. But he does such a good job capturing their inner child that identification is spontaneous. Many of the protagonists of his stories are female.

Trailokyonath was born in 1847, 10 years before Sepoy Mutiny. As multi-talented as they came in those days, he was a schoolteacher, a police sub-inspector, a bureaucrat and a museum curator. He travelled widely in northern India and Europe and wrote (essays) in both English and Bengali. However, his literary career began only after his retirement. It is said that he would smoke a pipe full of hashish, sit on his chouki in lotus pose and write straight on for two hours. This was his daily routine. Others say that his pipe contained opium — called chondu or chondur tamak when smoked.

When you collect water and freeze it, you get ice. Trailokyonath posits that, if you can collect enough darkness and freeze it, you will have a ghost. He wonders why the British who have created the refrigerator cannot build a machine for making these creatures, especially as so much darkness abounds, outside our home at nighttime and inside our hearts, in infinite amounts.

Told by a roja (medicine man) that only a ghost oil massage will give him unlimited strength so he can rescue his wife from Lullu, Amir walks to the tree which is the home of Gogo — the suicide-by-hanging ghost. He then takes off his head cloth and prepares a noose, as if to hang himself with. Immediately Gogo appears on a tree branch, swinging his legs and offering to pull at his feet at the moment of hanging, to facilitate his demise. He asks Amir to get on with it as his son-in-law is unemployed and, soon as Amir dies, he will depute him to be his ghost. Amir turns around and says, of course, this is a ruse, of course, he does not intend to hang himself, but he does intend to open a newspaper and make Gogo its editor and no, he does not care if Gogo can neither read nor write, it will be sufficient if he can gossip and bitch, and if he is not agreeable Amir will gouge out his eyes with his taaku, the small blade he uses to place the opium at the end of his pipe. A frightened Gogo gives in and shifts shape to enter his pipe. Gogo closes both ends and takes it to the buffalo wheel where he crushes the pipe and extracts a small glass bottleful of ghost oil. All the while, Gogo is screaming, is this what you meant by editorship, and Amir replies, yes, I’m getting an article out of you. This is how I’m doing it. At the end of it all, Amir lets the desiccated ghost-shell go. Trailokyonath reflects how Gogo is still alive only because he is a bhoot. Had he been human, he’d have been long dead.

Read Trailokyonath, my friends, if you read Bengali. And translate, and share with friends. He will make your day.